Will Blue Mountain coffee survive the global financial crisis?

I had no idea, when I wrote the blog on October 9, 2008, that Blue Mountain coffee was facing a major challenge for survival. First, International Herald Tribune published an AP report a few days ago that the two largest Blue Mountain coffee bean buyers stopped buying the beans because of the combination of bad times, i.e. the economy and hurricanes: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/18/business/CB-Jamaica-Blue-Mountain-Coffee.php. Then today, the Jamaica Observer, one of the two national dailies in paradise (the other is the Gleaner), reported that two major Blue Mountain coffee companies were being "divested": http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20081022T010000-0500_141617_OBS_COFFEE_SALE.asp.

I read the Observer article. What was striking to me was that the Jamaican government wants to privatize them, which implies that they are government-owned at the moment...! I had no idea, but Blue Mountain coffee has been government-owned in Jamaica, like water and electricity (by the way, now, Marubeni, a Japanese trading company, owns the electricity of Jamaica...). This indicates how important coffee beans have been for paradise.

The fundamental issue, however, that the Observer missed was that, whether privately or government owned, Blue Mountain coffee is facing a serious difficulty. It's "a want, not a need" when it comes to good coffee, I suppose, and so people around the world just choose to live without Blue Mountain coffee. I hope, I really hope, some affluent individuals out there would come and save the good old, wonderful, so dark and flavourful Blue Mountain coffee at this hard and difficult moment of the world...

The photo shows the packages of Blue Mountain coffee beans sold at the Sovereign supermarket in Liguanea. On the top shelf are found Jablum packages made by Mavis Bank (http://www.mavisbankcoffee.com/mavis_about.php), and the bottom shelf has packages from the Wallenford (http://www.wallenford.com/), both of which are being considered for "divestment" at the moment.